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Camper was stretched out the length of the Beetle’s backseat. He lifted his large head to sniff through the gap in the window. Maren opened the door and took the big dog’s weight against hers to help him down, a now-familiar routine.
Camper wobbled several steps, then leaned into a loping stride, momentum aiding his balance. He circled a nearby tree and lifted his hind leg, remarkably poised on his two remaining limbs for the moment it took to complete the important task of marking the trunk.
The loud sound of crickets chirping caught Maren off guard until she remembered Jenna had changed her phone’s ringtone to “sounds of nature” for her. She wasn’t sure yet if she liked it.
“New Mexico turned over the investment agreement,” Lana Decateau said, without preamble.
Maren took a breath and leaned against her car.
“Tamara Barnes opened the account when she was a senior at the University of New Mexico. You were right about that.” Lana paused. “There are four partners in the fund. Governor Raymond Fernandez is not among them. Jack Caries is. It looks like you were also correct that Tamara was referring to him.”
Camper had returned and lay at Maren’s feet, head on his paws, his eyes following her.
“In addition to Tamara Barnes, Wallis Lisborne, Jack Caries, and Caleb Waterston owned shares.”
Maren opened the car door and sat on the passenger seat. She didn’t trust her legs to support her. “Caleb?” First he shows up on Simone’s interview list, now on the investment account.
“Caleb did the legal work,” Lana explained. “Amendments to the partnership were drafted by him and kept in the files. Mr. Caries put his share in a blind trust once he was elected, so although he might have done the administrative work himself since he also has a law degree, under the circumstances it would have been unwise.”
“So the investments were legal?” Garrick had said as much, but Maren wanted to hear from Lana what the police and district attorney’s experts thought.
“Yes. Even the governor’s role. When he put his investments in a blind trust, it meant he no longer knew what was kept and what was sold. When he signed the hands-free cell phone bill, he might have hoped the TalkFree stocks were still in the account, that he would make millions. But he had no way of knowing. It wasn’t a sure thing.”
Still, even long odds might be incentive enough to make sure the bill passed and to be complicit in Marjorie Hopkins’s murder, Maren thought.
With her free hand she fiddled distractedly with the radio knob on the VW. It was loose and Maren had meant to get it fixed. She inhaled deeply. “Sean is not a recipient of the partnership.”
“I’m getting to that,” Lana said.
Maren shifted the phone to her other side. “What do you mean? You just gave four investors. They’re the ones who need to be looked at.”
Maren heard papers rustling.
“Sean is not a partner, that’s true. But each investor in the partnership account that Tamara Barnes forwarded to you had the option of designating a beneficiary to inherit their funds from the trust in the event of their death.” Lana cleared her throat. “And if both the investor and his or her beneficiary died, the agreement was structured such that the deceased investor’s share would be split among the remaining living investors.”
Lana paused. A long pause. Maren’s shoulders tensed again.
Lana finally resumed. “Each investor’s individual share of the account across all stocks and cash currently stands at five point three million. Caleb Waterston’s beneficiary is his mother, living in Florida. Wallis Lisborne didn’t name a beneficiary. She might have been unaware of the clause. It was buried deep in the paperwork.”
Another pause. Maren realized Lana was reading from notes.
“Jack Caries’s beneficiary was Tamara Barnes. Neither the governor nor Ms. Barnes had family to speak of, and they seem to have forged a sibling bond when both were foster kids in New York. Similarly, Tamara Barnes’s share was originally designated to go to Jack Caries if she died. Quid pro quo,” Lana said.
“That gives Jack Caries a motive for wanting Tamara dead, for working with Wallis,” Maren said, relieved, now understanding where this was going. She got back out of the car and leaned against it, feeling the warming sun. So the police have a new suspect. A difficult one, to be sure. A former governor. But she’d already figured that out, and this had to be good for Sean.
“Originally, yes, it would have,” Lana said. “But the day before her death Tamara Barnes altered the terms of the agreement, designating a new beneficiary. She had a legal notary witness a statement removing Jack Caries and leaving her full share to Sean Verston.”
Maren’s stomach dropped. When she spoke, her voice was strained. “Five point three million?”
“Yes. Everyone but Caries had converted their TalkFree stocks into cash a month or more ago. Since his share is in a blind trust, his fund manager is making independent decisions. In any case, the amounts are still divided by the agreement equally. And unfortunately, this dovetails with the prosecution theory that while Sean may have been fueled by obsessive jealousy when he killed Tamara Barnes, he was also motivated by money,” Lana said. “Lots of money.”
Lana hung up. Maren was shaken by the call, but she managed to get Camper settled on the front seat and was navigating toward the exit of the lot when she saw Jack Caries pull out ahead of her.
He must have left immediately following his welcome speech. It made sense since he wouldn’t be needed again until the finalists returned in a week or so.
Caries’s car was futuristic, low-slung and sexy. The body, gleaming silver with black accents, was lopped off in the back, square rather than rounded. Tesla, the manufacturer’s name, was in tall, thin letters spaced the width of the rear bumper. Maren recalled hoopla over his buying the vehicle for his personal use in his last days in office. It was electric and environmentally green, but anyone who ponied up the $100,000 price tag wasn’t pinching pennies on gas.
She felt a chill.
Caries had to be the one who engineered all this.
Neither Wallis nor Tamara could have done it on her own, she was certain. Waterston was just the legal hack. He made the money, but he didn’t have what it took to pull this off. And it wasn’t Sean. Though there was nothing she could do to prove that. Not that she could think of yet, anyway.
She recalled Sean’s manner in Rorie Rickman’s office when he’d knelt to look into Tamara’s eyes.
How Tamara had sought Sean out when she was afraid.
True, that was beginning to feel like a slim thread, but she couldn’t let it go. She wouldn’t.
Glancing at the time, Maren saw she would only make Camper’s vet appointment if she headed there right away. She pulled out after Jack Caries, one car between them, turning right toward the entrance to Highway 5.
As they approached the on-ramp, she could see traffic at a standstill a mile in the distance. There were back roads that would take her to the vet’s office, but lacking any sense of direction she would need to do a search using GPS to figure out the way. Then Jack Caries’s roadster inched out of line, and he made a hard left at the next light.
Odds were he was heading to the capitol area and knew another way. Maren eased the Beetle over, gunned the engine, and accelerated through a yellow signal at the intersection, following his lead. Camper slid part way off the seat, but they made it.
There was sparse traffic so it was easy to keep Caries in sight. He was on the phone hands-free or talking to himself. Maren reflected that hands-free technology made that brand of crazy look normal. Either way, he was engrossed in conversation. Something serious, his matinee-idol smile in storage for the moment.
After fifteen minutes through barren country landscape, things began to look familiar to Maren. There was a gas station, then a succession of small shops. Well-kept, upscale, with a village-like feel—if villages catered to residents who bought Prada and Tiffany. At the crest of the hill Caries turned left again and Maren slowed, realizing she’d been there before. A fund-raiser for a state senate candidate, posh food and free-flowing money, held at Caleb Waterston’s house, just a block up the road.
She made the turn and pulled over in front of a Georgian-style mansion with an expansive front lawn that must have cost a fortune to keep green. She could see Waterston’s fab concrete-and-glass ’70s split-level home four doors down, stark and ostentatious. Jack Caries’s sleek silver car in the driveway made the place look Architectural Digest ready.
Maren helped Camper out, silently apologizing to her canine friend that the vet would have to wait. They started down the broad, sloping street. Nothing suspicious, just a woman on a walk with her dog on a fine day. In any case, Maren felt her activities were innocent enough. She didn’t have a plan, not even a hope of hearing what might be going on behind closed doors between the two men. But the meeting had to mean something. She couldn’t just drive away.
Having gone only a few feet, Maren realized she’d left her cell phone in the car in her satchel. Since her injury she felt bare without it. She couldn’t get to the phone quickly enough if she had to make a call. She went back for it.
She’d just unlocked the car door and taken hold of her bag when she heard a yowl, then a growl, and Camper was off, down the hill and across Waterston’s driveway as an orange flash of fur disappeared under the Tesla and out the other side. Camper skidded, narrowly missing the car, then rounded the corner toward the back of the house after the cat, in full three-legged pursuit.
“No, Camper,” Maren stage-whispered before recognizing that was completely ineffective. “Camper, no,” she tried again, a little louder, slinging the satchel, unreasonably heavy, over her shoulder and walking as rapidly as she could toward the scene of the chase, not wanting to alert the occupants inside but needing to get Camper out of there before he ended up with a scratched eye or worse from his feline quarry.
That was when she heard it. A gunshot.
Then another.
From behind the house.
At the same moment, it dawned on her why her bag was so heavy. She had a gun, too—her gun. She hadn’t had time to even think of returning it once Lana had called.
Maren dropped the bag and pulled the weapon out, gripping it with both hands, holding the gun straight-armed out in front of her as she had seen cops rounding blind corners do on TV. She knew her gun wasn’t loaded. She wasn’t daft, as Polly would have put it. She couldn’t—and she hoped wouldn’t—shoot anyone. But if Waterston thought breaking up an unwelcome cat-and-dog fight in his yard required a weapon, he had another thing coming. And if something worse was happening, she figured better faux-armed than not armed at all.
She found the cat where the short driveway ended. A fat, smug-looking orange creature, it was fifteen feet up a massive eucalyptus tree, giving Camper the stink-eye. Camper, for his part, was circling the trunk madly, pausing only to jump on one leg to get closer to his target, although not by much.
There was a four-foot-high wrought-iron fence separating Caleb Waterston’s yard from the wooded expanse where the cat and dog were failing at détente. Maren could see one end of a dark-bottomed Olympic-size swimming pool with a diving board, flanked by chrome lattice chairs, matching tables, and lounges. The rest of her view was blocked by Japanese hollies, tall and thin, wedged together as a privacy screen. She could hear but not see a waterfall or fountain feature at the far end.
Maren set her gun down on the ground and quickly unbuckled her belt, slipping it off. She walked toward Camper, took hold of his collar to get his attention, and looped the belt through the collar like a leash. It was uncomfortable for Camper to keep his balance on three legs walking when tethered, she knew that. But there was no other way to secure obedience while he was in hunt mode, and she had to get him out of harm’s way.
Toward the front of the house she was able to secure the belt through a thin handle on a side gate, giving Camper the down-and-stay command with her hand before going back to retrieve her gun. She couldn’t leave it, and she wanted out of there. She would call the police when she reached the street and relative safety. But as she bent to pick up the weapon, she heard a moan—a deep, terrible, pain-filled sound. She edged closer to the fence and squeezed in front of the hedges to see. Her gasp was audible when she witnessed the scene.
Jack Caries lay sprawled on his back, arms flung open on both sides. Blood seeped from his right shoulder. Caleb Waterston stood a good six to eight feet away, a .38 revolver in his right hand hanging limp at his side. His large head seemed possessed by a tremor, rocking loosely on his neck, making his resemblance to a ballpark bobblehead toy more marked than ever. Eyes wide, he saw her.
“Maren” was all he managed. “Maren.” Waterston’s brain seemed stuck on repeat. He tried again. “So good of you to come.” What is this, a tea party? she thought.
Then Caleb seemed to remember Jack Caries a few feet away. “Terrible. He came to kill me. A black moon on the horizon.” He looked down at the gun he was holding—each thing seemed new to him. He laid it on a small white resin table near the edge of the pool, then eased into one of the scoop-shaped latticed chairs. He looked back through the gaps in the hedges, seeing Maren again.
“There was a struggle. I trumped the eagle, the thing went off, an accident.”
Caries moaned, moving one hand to his shoulder, where it quickly turned red with the steady flow of blood. If something isn’t done right away . . . Maren shifted her gun to her left hand and opened the gate.
“Call the police,” Caleb said, his reedy voice weak. “There’s a phone in my study.” He gestured to a sliding glass door at the back of the house. “I can’t believe it, an assassin in my own yard.” He looked back at Jack, who started to rise, to lean on one hand and pull himself to sitting but gave up the effort. His eyes rolled back in his head.
Caleb Waterston’s face distorted at Jack’s movement. He stood and reached for his gun.
“No,” Maren said. “It’s okay now.”
She walked toward Caleb, placing her own gun on the table next to his, noticing a cell phone and two highball glasses there. It reminded her this was a setting for poolside drinks and conversation, not firearms.
She moved between Caleb and Jack, taking off her jacket, kneeling and wadding it up, pressing it against the former governor’s wound to stop the bleeding.
“He can’t hurt you,” she said to Caleb even as she focused on Jack Caries, on trying to keep him with her. “You call the police, see the phone there? I’ll do what I can.”
Caries spoke. His voice was hoarse and urgent. “Liar . . .”
Liar?
He tried to speak again, but he was so weak there was no sound. She leaned in to hear. “Caleb . . . Wallis . . .”
“No!” Caleb’s high-pitched voice cut in, almost a screech. She turned and saw he had his gun trained on her. His hands were shaking. “It’s too bad, really. You should have gone in the house when I asked you to. Then Jack would be dead when you came back. He would have nothing to tell you. You should have!” As Caleb spoke—incensed, passionate—the shaking increased. His entire frame appeared in motion, rocking side to side, buffeted by winds that weren’t there. “Now Jack will have to kill you. Because you got in the way when he came to kill me.”
Maren moved slowly to one knee as Caleb’s gun vibrated with his tremors. She understood now.
Caleb.
Caleb and Wallis, it was the two of them. Marjorie Hopkins’s murder, then Tamara.
She figured she had only one play.
“Caleb, it’s okay. I understand. This is Jack’s fault. Jack’s the bad guy.” Caleb’s arm dropped slightly, his gun wavered.
“Let’s call the police together. Let’s tell them.” Maren’s voice was gentle, reassuring. “They’ll believe us, you and me. Like you said, Jack will be gone by then. It’s better if there are two of us here to tell it.” She stood as she spoke, arms out from her sides, empty-handed, her palms open toward him. Caleb lowered the gun a little more, thinking. Watching. As he did, Maren charged, launching herself at him, knocking them both backward into the pool, Caleb dropping the gun on the concrete as he fell into the water.
He struggled to get back to the side, his shoes and heavy clothing making it difficult for him to move in the pool. But he made it, grabbed the weapon, and stood in the shallow end, his thinning red hair dripping water in his eyes. He aimed first in one direction, then another, the gun tilted down—no idea where Maren was. Only that she was under the shimmering blue surface somewhere, the dark-gray bottom and sides of the pool deepening the color of the water, obscuring his view.
Maren had swum to the far end below the diving board. She was in her element, looping back and forth underwater, coming up for air only when she had to. She felt like a pop-up duck in a shooting gallery.
She tracked the sound—finally, her firearms training came in handy. Waterston’s .38, like hers, should hold six bullets, although some .38s chambered up to twelve. She’d need to take that chance.
She had heard two gunshots before she got to the yard. There had been four since, or was that three? It was quiet for a minute, so she surfaced for air. Caleb was waiting, ready, and took another shot.
Fortunately, it was wide of the mark. Damn, NOW that’s four, Maren realized. She pushed off the far wall and took broad strokes underwater, keeping her eyes open despite the burning chlorine. She locked in on Caleb’s spindly legs, his pants billowing loosely around them. Caleb was turning, heading for the pool steps, probably to reload. But she got to him within seconds, pulling him under, then wrapping her arm around his chest firmly from behind. Surfacing, she cradled Caleb against her like she would to save a life, a drowning man. When she pulled him toward the side, he kicked and writhed, but to no end.